Republican TV debate: contenders focus on attacking Barack Obama

Seven Republicans squared off in the first major debate of the 2012 election
campaign but studiously avoided attacking each other and instead turned
their attention to their ultimate target - President Barack Obama.

As a politician in liberal Massachusetts, Mitt Romney took stands now at odds with many Republican primary votersPhoto: REUTERS

“Any one of the people on this stage would be a better president than President Obama,” Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, who cemented his frontrunner status with an assured performance.

“Why isn’t the president leading? He isn’t balancing our budget and he isn’t leading on jobs. He’s failed the American people... And that’s why he’s not going to be re-elected.”

The most tense moment came when Tim Pawlenty, the former Minnesota governor, was pushed by the moderator of the CNN debate to repeat his harsh characterisation of Mr Romney’s and Mr Obama’s healthcare reforms as being indistinguishable, dubbing them “Obamneycare”.

But Mr Pawlenty, often accused of being bland, appeared reluctant to criticise a fellow Republican face to face.

“President Obama is the person who I quoted in saying he looked to Massachusetts for designing his programme,” he said. “He’s the one who said it’s a blueprint and that he merged the two programs. And so using the term ’Obamneycare’ was a reflection of the president’s comments that he designed Obamacare on the Massachusetts health care plan.

The most recent Gallup poll gave Mr Romney a clear lead with 24 points, ahead of Sarah Palin, who has not announced whether she will run, on 16 points and the rest of the field bunched behind.

“Michele Bachmann stands out on stage when there are seven people and six of them sort of blend together,” said Fergus Cullen, a former chairman of the New Hampshire Republican party, after the debate.

“It’s a huge advantage for her. She was especially strong in the first half of the debate. Romney has to feel good. He comes out of it without any bumps or bruises, no one went after him, he didn’t make any mistakes.

“Pawlenty had the opportunity to make a polite distinction. He didn’t have to be super belligerent or aggressive and he clearly had made the decision he just wasn’t going to do that. So why did he use the term Obamaneycare yesterday? He could have made the point without coming across as a jerk.”

Mrs Bachmann, a mother of five and stepmother of 23 who is a leading figure in the anti-tax, small-government Tea Party, the only woman in the debate, immediately seized the limelight by using her opening comments to announce that she had just formally registered her candidacy.

She then laid into Mr Obama on Libya. “We are the head,” she said. “We are not the tail. The president was wrong. All we have to know is the president deferred leadership in Libya to France. That’s all we need to know. The president was not leading when it came to Libya.

First of all, we were not attacked. We were not threatened with attack. There was no vital national interest. I sit on the House Select Committee on Intelligence. We deal with the nation’s vital classified secrets. We to this day don’t yet know who the rebel forces are that we’re helping.”

The candidates united in their denunciations of Mr Obama, who has less than 50 percent approval ratings in the polls and is seen by Republicans as very vulnerable because of the state of the American economy.

“When 14 million Americans are out of work we need a new president to end the Obama Depression,” said Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House of Representatives.

Rick Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator said that Mr Obama had enacted “oppressive policies” that had destroyed the economy while Mr Pawlenty branded him a “declinist” who views America “as one of equals around the world”.

He added: “We’re not the same as Portugal; we’re not the same as Argentina...It’s a defeatist attitude...I don’t accept this notion that we’re going to be average or anaemic.”